Spain’s Wind Industry Didn’t Install a Single Project in 2015

Stephen Lacey is the Editor-in-Chief of Greentech Media. He manages a team of writers focused on solar, storage, efficiency, mobility, and grid modernization. He is producer/host of The Energy Gang and Interchange podcasts, two leading interview and analysis shows on the business of energy and cleantech.

Bloomberg: Spain Installed No Wind Power for First Time Since '80s in 2015

Spain didn’t install a single megawatt of wind power capacity in 2015, the first time the industry has had a dead year since the 1980s.

Total installed capacity stalled at 22,988 megawatts, with wind covering 19 percent of power demand in Spain last year, the Spanish Wind Energy Association, known by its Spanish initials AEE, said Tuesday in a statement. Just 27 megawatts of new capacity has been installed since 2013, when a new payments system was introduced.

Thai oil and energy company Bangchak plans to acquire the Japanese solar division of clean energy company SunEdison for about $82 million, according to local Thai media and a filing with the Stock Exchange of Thailand.

The news comes after SunEdison’s stock has dropped over 90% over the past nine months from $33.45 per share over the summer to $3.02 at Monday’s close.

BP is to ax another 7,000 jobs after reporting an annual loss of $6.5B (£4.5B), the worst in its history.

Shares in the oil company dived 8.6% to 335p by the end of trading on Tuesday, wiping almost £6B off the stock market value of the business, and helped drag down the wider FTSE 100 index of leading shares in London.

The poor financial performance of BP, followed by a 68% fall in quarterly profits from rival ExxonMobil in the U.S. and further weakness in the price of crude, depressed stock markets on both sides of the Atlantic on Tuesday. The FTSE 100 finished the day down 2.2% at 5922.01 points, while in New York, the Dow Jones fell more than 230 points, or 1.4%, in early trading.

To understand how Puerto Rico’s power authority has piled up $9 billion in debt, one need only visit this bustling city on the northwest coast.

Twenty years ago, it was just another town with dwindling finances. Then, it went on a development spree, thanks to a generous -- some might say ill-considered -- gift from the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority.

While Hawaiian Electric Co. customers on Oahu are battling just to get their rooftop photovoltaic systems on-line, Kauai Island Utility Cooperative members are hitting an impressive renewable energy milestone.

Four times in January, KIUC generated 90 percent of the island's electrical needs with renewable resources.

"It's a big deal for Kauai, Hawaii and really the nation," said KIUC CEO David Bissell. "It's really a remarkable achievement from a technology side and from an engineering side to do that."